Linda Gass

Linda Gass

IL60610-001

Linda Gass

Karen Musgrave

11/12/06

eQuilter.com

Chicago, Illinois

Kim Greene

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave. I am at the Indigo Hotel in Chicago, Illinois conducting a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with, where are you from?

Linda Gass (LG): Los Altos, California.

KM: Thank you. I usually state where the person is from. This is Linda Glass.

LG: Gass.

KM: Oh sorry, Gass. So, let's begin our interview. It is 10:30 in the morning. So, let's start by telling me about the quilt that you have selected for this interview.

LG: All right. This was one of the very first painted silk quilts I ever made. It is whole cloth that has been painted with silk dyes, using the gutta serti method on a piece of white silk, and it is an aerial landscape view of Interstate 5 crossing the California aqueduct in the Central Valley of California, a major farming valley where most of the produce for our country comes from. I was drawn to an image, an aerial photograph of this landscape that I saw in a book and wanted to recreate it. This quilt is actually kind of [laughs.], there is kind of a funny story behind it, there are several funny stories. But I decided to start out by making a prototype quilt, because I was going to do quite a large one. This is quite small, it is 21" X 26", and I knew that the Quilt National deadline was coming up, and I heard that that was a really good venue to get my work into. I was just starting out. I was going to work on this prototype to make a larger version to try to submit to Quilt National. I started working on the prototype, and I just did not like the way it was coming out, I thought it was terrible. I set it aside thinking, 'okay something will come to me.' Somebody had given me a list put together by the Guerrilla Girls, a feminist group oriented towards art making, and one of the items on the list was, 'let yourself make something ugly every day,' and I thought, okay I am going to do what the Guerrilla Girls say. So, I started pulling out orange dyes and purple dyes and sticking them into the landscape in ways that did not match this photograph at all. I just made it really ugly. I thought, 'okay there I'm done with it.' So, I set it aside hoping that the colors for the real one would come to me, and it didn't, and I thought, well maybe I should start quilting this to figure out how I'm going to quilt the final thing. The moment I started quilting it, it came alive, and I started really liking it. And time was ticking by for the Quilt National deadline, and I realized I have no time to make a big piece. And then I realized, you know, I used a photograph out of a book, which I have infringed on a copyright by doing that, unless I get permission. The book was by a photographer, it was by two names, I assumed one was the photographer and one was the writer. It was a book about California. So, I contacted the photographer. I actually cold called him in Santa Barbara, and he was really nice and said, 'That's not my photograph. That is Ray Atkinson's photograph. That was the other name on the book. I had not heard of Ray Atkinson. Once I looked him up, I felt embarrassed that I hadn't heard of him, because he was actually the photographer laureate for the state of Oregon. He's got a viewpoint in an Oregon State Park named after him, and he's like a big deal. And I said, 'Oh, do you know how I can get in touch with him?', and he said, 'I'm sorry but he died, he was my mentor, he is no longer alive. Yes, but maybe you can get in touch with his stepson'. So, I thought, oh my god, how am I going to do this? So, I started Googling on the Internet, and I found a brewery in Oregon that had an image of Ray Atkinson's on their beer bottles. It was like one of these boutique brew beers. So, I called them up and I asked to speak to their marketing person to find out how they licensed this photograph, and she gave me the name of Ray Atkinson's stepson, who didn't have the same last name, and then I was able to track down this guy's phone number. I got his wife on the phone, who was really nice. I explained to her that I had made a quilt and that I wanted permission. She asked me to send them a letter describing what I had done, and they sent me a licensing agreement and charged me a licensing fee. I paid the licensing fee and got the copyright issue all squared away and then I could send this off to Quilt National. Much to my surprise, it got in. Then to my bigger surprise, it actually won the Rookie Award. So, it was really one of these things that took off, and I just, I was really pleased. I'm not quite sure what I can say next about, I can tell the story about the award.

KM: Okay.

LG: So, the award was presented by it was sponsored by the Studio Art Quilts Associates, and at that time, Yvonne Porcella was still the president of the organization, she is the founder. She was present at that Quilt National; it was Quilt National '99. When she presented the award to me, she said, 'What I find so special about this opportunity to present this award is that the landscape that is in Linda's quilt is exactly the land that separates us'. I live on one side of it, and she lives on the other side of it. So, it was really, it was one of these things where it felt like the stars were all aligned, and it was all meant to be.

KM: This quilt travels?

LG: Yes, it does travel. It was in Quilt National and traveled for three years as part of the Quilt National exhibition. Then I got it back, and I hadn't seen it in so long, I just had my photograph of it to remember it by, which I knew was different in color from the actual quilt. The photograph in the Quilt National book was shot with museum lighting, so it is very flat and very bright. Much lighter than the actual quilt is. So, I wasn't sure what it really looked like when it came back. I was afraid to look at it. It sat in a box for a year. [laughs.] I was that afraid to look at it. [laughs.] And finally, one day, I just thought that I better open it up, because I remembered it had been wrapped in plastic and it's really terrible to leave a fiber that has been made from living material in plastic. So, I opened it up and I was really happy to see it again. And, since then, it has traveled to many exhibitions. It was at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, it had a long run at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica, it's going off to the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I am trying to remember if it's been elsewhere. Not remembering right now.

KM: Is this typical of your work?

LG: The imagery. It is typical of my work, yes. That was another thing, an interesting thing that happened with this. I made this quilt, it was such a runaway success, and I felt like I arrived at it by such an accidental process, I didn't know how I could recreate it. [laughs.] Even though it was my intention to pursue an aerial landscape series that addressed environmental issues, I was really afraid to. So, after that I started making quilts that were very different from this. Experimenting with different kinds of techniques of silk dying and quilt construction. A lot of them pretty unconventional. Then I received a critique by the director of the San Jose Museum of Art, Dan Keegan who before being at the San Jose Museum of Art was the director of the Kempner Museum in Kansas City. He looked at my work, and he said, 'You know what, you need to focus', and he said, 'Pick one of your styles, I don't care which one it is, pick the one you like the best, focus.' And I thought it's time for me to get back to the aerial landscape that I really, I always felt drawn to, and stepped away from out of fear, which is really a bad reason to step away from work. So, now I'm back to working the aerial landscape style, and I'm really happy, it feels very right.

KM: So, how many have you done?

LG: So, um, I don't know how many I have done. Probably about twelve, fourteen.

KM: Where do you get the photographs?

LG: Now my photographs come from copyright free sources. [laughs.] I'm not a pilot, so I can't go and take my own photographs. The United States Geological Survey, the USGS, has a wonderful library of historical aerial photographs of the whole country. And where I'm at in Northern California, they are immediately available in the library there. So, I use those. And, then I'm also using Google Earth, which is based on satellite imagery and aerial photography. Again, copyright free provided by the government, and so it's really a wealth of information for me.

KM: So, how do you go about selecting the aerial photograph you use in a piece of art?

LG: Yeah. All my work is about water issues in the American West, mostly in California. So, in terms of selecting a photograph, I select areas where there have been manmade interventions on our landscape that affect how water is used and abused. My most recent series is on San Francisco Bay where ninety-five percent of the wetlands around the bay have been converted into salt ponds or filled with landfill for development, and so I have been using aerial photographs of the Bay, and specifically those wetland areas, which are these unbelievable patterns that say quilts to me. But I have others that are in the works for the dam in Hetch Hetchy Valley, Mono Lake, and other areas as well.

KM: Are they all full cloths that you paint?

LG: Yes, I strictly work with full cloth. So, I call my work, "Quilted Fine Art Paintings on Silk," because I do the painting, and then I quilt them to add texture and more design elements.

KM: So, it is all silk?

LG: Yes, I use silk crepe de chine, one hundred percent silk.

KM: And what kind of batting, do you use a silk batting?

LG: No, I don't use silk batting, I use high loft polyester batting, and I use the highest loft I can find, because I really want my quilts to be textured, almost looking like a trapunto, where they have been stuffed.

KM: It is machine quilted?

LG: It is machine quilted, yes. I was originally using nylon monofilament, because I didn't want the thread color to take away from the painting, but now I've moved towards using rayon embroidery thread, because I'm actually using, in certain instances, the color of the thread to paint more on top of my painting. I am planning to move to silk thread, dyed silk threads, so that's in the works.

KM: Are you going to dye your own?

LG: No, there are actually suppliers that provide dyed silk threads in a lot of different colors. So that is one of the things I plan to experiment with next.

KM: How big is your work? Has your work gotten bigger? Has it stayed small?

LG: It's gotten a little bit bigger, but it is still relatively small. My newer pieces are thirty inches by thirty inches. Part of it is a restriction of my studio size. I just can't do a painting that is very large given my space right now. Part of it is the sewing machine that I use. I have an old Bernina. I think it's an 801. It's one of the old metal machines. And, I just don't have a lot of sewing table space. So, I tend to work smaller.

KM: Tell me about your studio.

LG: My studio is a bedroom in my house. It was not designed to be a studio. And, it is also my office, it's where my computer lives, and all my files and books, and I do my painting on a drafting table that I have elevated to be probably countertop height. I have my dyes along the wall with my dye color charts that I have made. And, I have various photographs and other bits and things that inspire me. Samples that I have done in workshops hanging up around the walls. The windows of my studio look out on my garden. I keep garden, I grow a lot of my own vegetables. I try to do it year around actually, because we have a really lovely climate where we are at. [laughs.]

KM: Unlike Chicago.

LG: Right, yeah. [laughs.] So, there are some nice winter crops that I can grow. I like looking out at nature, nature is what inspires me. It is where I go to recharge my batteries.

KM: So, gardening is a big part of your life then?

LG: Yeah, it is a big part of my life. I really like the process of growing your own food. And the miracle of starting with a tiny seed. [laughs.] Growing into this huge plant and providing you with all this bounty. It is just remarkable to me.

KM: So, tell me how, how did you get started in quiltmaking?

LG: Well, I have always worked with textiles all my life. My grandmother taught me how to sew and embroider when I was a child. She taught me how to sew by hand and do a lot of different embroidery stitches. And then when I was in, probably I was about twelve years, they still had home economics classes in schools then, and I took a sewing class and I learned how to use a sewing machine, and I started making my own clothes. I kept sewing, even though my academic studies took me really far away from art. I ended up with a bachelor's in math and a master's in computer science, but I still would make art on the side. I always took art classes when I could. A lot of life drawing, some art history, um, some photography, a basic design class. And, then I worked in the computer industry for ten years, and after ten years I had all the fun I could stand. [laughs.] And it was time to get back to what I really loved, which was art. I didn't study art in college, because my parents basically told me that if I wanted to study art, I could live at home and get a job and go to the local community college and pay for my own education. And, at that point I was living three thousand miles away from home and really liking being far away from home. [laughs.] And I thought, okay well this is a pretty good deal, I will do what they want, it won't be so bad. But it was time to get back to art. And, so I started taking watercolor classes, because I was really drawn to the look of watercolor, and one day I just happened on an art store where they were doing a hands on silk painting demonstration, and so I could actually use the silk dyes myself and I took the brush in my hand and the minute I touched that brush to the fabric, I disappeared into some meditative world and I just fell in love with it. I got myself a set of silk dyes, took it home and started painting on silk, thinking I can make my own clothing, I could start a wearable art business, and realized really soon that I loved painting the fabric, dying the fabric, and I hated the process of construction. [laughs.] It was really boring. I mean I love creating something new once. [laughs.] When I was working, I managed a group of thirty-two people in a big software development project, and so I knew what went into managing people, and there was no way I wanted to manage people to do my construction. And I thought, what I really like about this is the creating the imagery, and so I started moving back towards doing paintings, like I was doing when I was doing watercolor instead of textile designs, and um, there was something about the linear nature of silk painting that begged to be quilted. And so, I started. I took a half day hand quilting workshop and realized that there was no way I wanted to put in the time to learn how to hand quilt to the degree that would satisfy my sense of perfection. [laughs.] And so, then I took a machine quilting course and I said, okay this is what I need, and I just took off from there. I learned how to do the stippling, but I wanted to do more than stippling on top of my quilts, so I just started fooling around with what I could do and using lines to enhance my design.

KM: So, do you work full time at making?

LG: I basically work full time at my art making, but that doesn't mean that I'm spending full time creating, because I really approach my art like a business, and I want to get my work out there, because it's very important to me that it be seen. And so, I spend at least fifty percent of my time doing things that are related to getting my work into shows, getting it published, any number of other things that one does to get ones work out there. I also do other things as well. I do a lot of volunteer work, and right now I'm on a couple of boards. I'm on the board of the Textile Arts Council of the de Young Museum, and that promotes the appreciation of textiles in the Bay area, and I'm also on the advisory board of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing the kind of community building interactive art that one might see if one went to Burning Man, this large counterculture art event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. They try to bring that art to cities around the country as temporary art installations. So, I'm involved with that.

KM: You and I have discussed that you are curating your first exhibition.

LG: Yes.

KM: How did that come about?

LG: Oh boy, well that started with kind of a joke in a way, and actually I prefer not to tell the story.

KM: You don't have to tell the story of it, but why curating? More about why.

LG: Why curating?

KM: Why you decided to go off and do this?

LG: Well, it was an idea that I felt like needed to happen in the world, and if I didn't do it, I don't know who would. So, this is the first time I'm doing this. I'm learning, it's a huge steep learning curve, approaching artists, working with the artists, working with the gallery where it is going to be shown, coordinating everything. I hope to publish a catalogue. I guess when I take on a project, I want to do it right, so, since I felt like this idea needed to happen, I'm just putting myself behind it one hundred percent to make it happen, however it needs to happen. And I'm always interested in learning new things. I love doing that, and I love challenges. So, I guess that's why, just it's another great area to grow in with respect to art and what it takes to bring something together and to focus an idea, but yet allow a lot of room for creative expression.

KM: To raise consciousness.

LG: And, again to bring something out into the world for other people to experience.

KM: So, whose work are you drawn to and why?

LG: Well, that's a good question. I'm really very much drawn to the work of the land artists, so people like Robert Smithson, um, and Andy Goldsworthy. He was probably the first land artist I became familiar with. Walter De Maria, and his work I found very profound. Because my work is so much about the landscape and what is going on with the landscape, and so it's those artists whose work I am drawn to. I work in a very different medium from what they do, I have done some land art, and I have used textiles in the landscape to do it.

KM: So, tell me about that.

LG: So, it all came out of two Continuing Studies classes I took that were offered though Stanford University on Land Art. The first one was focused on the ancient waterway that flowed from Mono Lake all the way into Death Valley, when Death Valley was once a lake. This was at the end of the last Ice Age. It was truly an interdisciplinary course where we studied the geology of the region, the anthropology and the politics, which included water politics and it is all about California water politics in the Owens River Valley. And then we also studied land art. And so, we did that for six weeks, and then it culminated in a five-day wilderness camping experience where there were twenty of us who went on the trip, and we did individual and group art installations in the different locations that we went to along this ancient waterway. You could bring materials that you wanted to work with, or you could use materials found on site. They were all temporary art installations. And so, we arrived at a place, and we maybe had two hours to scout a location, do our installation, and then take maybe another two hours to do a walk through and critique. Pick it all up and go. So, in those two hours, I was setting up my installation, photographing it.

KM: So, what did it look like?

LG: My first set of work I brought nylon tulle in watercolors: blues, turquoises, aqua, white. And I thought I brought so much fabric. I brought twenty yards, and you know, in my studio would easily cover my studio, but [laughs.] in a landscape it was really dwarfed. But what I did, I used it to recreate water features where there is no longer water. I had to carefully pick my locations so that my installations didn't look dwarfed and meaningless. [laughs.] And the way I photographed them, I framed them so that they look much bigger than they actually are. The camera is great for tricks like that. But, um, so that was my first series. Then the second class we did ancient Lake Lahontan, which is in the Central Great Basin of Nevada. There I knew about the scale of the landscape, so what I brought were long strips of fabric that I had made in advance that were six feet long but very narrow. My idea was to put embroidery stitches in the landscape, and what I was trying to do there was to stitch together the past landscape that was full of water with the present landscape that is completely dry. I need to get some water. Speaking of water. [laughs.] So, I used various classic stitches, like cross stitch or running stitch or zigzag stitch to be kind of, I was embroidering a narrative on the landscape to draw this connection. So that is what I did with my second series. All very much textile related, stitching related, and they were really wonderful experiences.

KM: What do you think is your biggest challenging confronting you in the future?

LG: Well, one of my biggest challenges is I have way more ideas than I could ever execute on. So, choosing those ideas is a big challenge. I'm also drawn to working in ways that are really different from the body of work that I created and making that switch as an artist can be a very challenging thing, and I'm trying to decide at what point in my career is the right time to change. So, it's that tension between how long do I keep working this one body of ideas, and when do I make a change. But I figure that something will tell me [laughs.] when it is time to do that.

KM: What do you think will be next for you then?

LG: Well, I probably will continue working this aerial landscape body of work, because I do have many other areas of water issues that I want to bring attention to. And that is what I really consider my work to be about, as a way to bring focus to those water issues. The more I have studied about what is going on, the more I realize how little I know and how little the public knows, and how much has been covered up. Part of what got me going on this whole thing is that I grew up in Los Angeles, and it always troubled me. There was something that felt wrong about that landscape, because it was so artificially green and all the swimming pools, but yet the weather didn't match all the lushness. It hardly ever rained. My mother grew up in Europe and they have this thing where you know when there would be a salad made for the meal, and my mom, if we left any of the salad, she would tell us that we had to finish it all otherwise it is going to rain tomorrow. Because where she grew up in Luxemburg, there was a really high likelihood that it would rain tomorrow, and you didn't want it to rain. But in L.A., we would get five days of rain a year. [laughs.] It was just kind of crazy. I think that kind of played in my mind, you know, making me aware that it does rain other places and it just didn't rain where I was. And, then I read Cadillac Desert, and learned about this dam break that occurred when they were building the Owens River pipeline, and there was a dam outside of L.A., the St. Francis Dam that when they filled it developed cracks which they ignored, and then the dam broke, and it killed more people than the San Francisco Earthquake did. In my study of California history, I never learned about that. So, you know, there is just a lot to be brought forward about what we are doing, and there's a lot smarter ways to be doing this. I feel like I still need to keep working this theme.

KM: How does your family feel about what you are doing?

LG: [laughs.] When I first decided to quit my nice software job [laughs.] that was very economically and financially stable, they were pretty freaked out. And also, I announced that I was gonna go be an artist now, and I think also there was this real sense of you know, all this education that you did, you know you got a masters in computer science, you are throwing that away. So, I think they were pretty disappointed. But I think now they have seen the recognition and how well received my work has been, which I feel really fortunate that I have had the luck for that to happen. And I think that they really accept the fact that I am an artist, and I am taking care of myself. [laughs.] I haven't gone back to them for money. [laughs.] Um, so you know I think they are actually quite proud of me at this point.

KM: Now you call yourself an artist versus a quiltmaker?

LG: I do.

KM: Is that distinction really important to you?

LG: In a sense I guess I do feel like it is really important to me. I don't understand why quiltmakers aren't artists. I guess I could call myself a quilt artist, but you know in other fields of art, painters, they're not called a paint artist or a sculptor, [laughs.] called a clay artist or a bronze artist. So I just call myself artist, because I feel like what I'm making is art. I feel like it is in that fine intellectual tradition of art, and um, so. I guess that is why.

KM: Lets kind of move this into a more about esthetics and so forth a little bit more.

LG: Okay.

KM: What do you think makes something artistically powerful? What do you think makes a quilt artistically power?

LG: Well, I think it goes back to the classic design elements, the composition, the color choices, the patterns, rhythms, textures and how those come together, how they are selected by the artist. You know there are abstract quilts and there is representational, there is geometric, I'm not thinking of any other categories that I could divide it into at this point. And, I think, you know, whichever category the artist chooses to work in, it comes back to those elements that make it strong and appealing. I don't know what more I can say on that. I can talk about my own choices if that's--

KM: That's good.

LG: Okay. So, I tend to work in complimentary colors. I tend to actually work, using a very small number of colors. You can look at my quilts and it looks like there's a lot of colors in there, but I've probably only chosen five. I layer them, which creates more colors, but I try to stick with--I try to stay with a maximum of five or six colors. And so, I usually pick six, where I will pick three on each side, you know three of each compliment. So, of course I'm going into the split compliments a lot. But most of my work tends to be done in that way. I achieve most of my value difference through the compliments, as opposed to using lighter and darker versions, although I will do that if I really want to achieve a sense of depth in my painting, I will go for lighter, duller colors in the background and brighter, darker colors in the foreground. So that's my color choices. In terms of composition, I tend to use very strong linear compositions where my lines are drawing the viewer through my painting, my image. I try to give my pieces a focal point. I don't try to do it consciously, but I always examine my works to make sure that it does have sense of focal point. And often times the colors I choose aren't related to the landscape that I'm trying to portray; I use a lot of artistic license. Like if you saw the original photograph for this.

KM: That is one of the questions I was going to ask.

LG: [laughs.] I had one friend who looked at the original photograph of this, and they said that you have a lot of imagination Linda. [laughs.] Because I think the photograph was taken in fall or winter when the fields were fallow, so it's very gray and brown, and I was drawn to that photograph for its composition. There was something about that sweep of the aqueduct, the curve in it, and then the line of the interstate running through just the way the farm fields were broken up, not in the classic square farm fields. I was really drawn to that, which is probably what Ray Atkinson was drawn to when he shot that photograph. But I have since embellished it with colors that are unreal. I mean I used the Guerilla Girls, 'let yourself do something ugly.' I like started pulling out the paint box and like which one doesn't belong. [laughs.] Stick that one in.

KM: Did you know how you were going to quilt?

LG: Nope.

KM: Beforehand, how you are going to quilt?

LG: I had no idea. In fact, I had never done any quilting like this before this one. I had done two painted silk quilts before this piece, and they were very geometric, and I just quilted on the geometric lines. This was the first landscape I did. I mean this was like, this quilt was such a case of beginner's luck it is kind of unbelievable. But I was thinking farm fields, so there's a lot of rows of stitching. In some areas they weren't farm fields and I thought they were more mountainous and so I started doing more stipple stitching, but it's even more irregular than just the puzzle shapes that you get with the stipple.

KM: So how much, when you begin a work, how much is preplanned and how much do you allow to evolve?

LG: Yeah, so I do a lot of planning and then I do a lot of spontaneous decisions when I'm painting and when I'm quilting. I start out with photographs, and then I will take those photographs and I will do a lot of thumbnail sketches, with colors, so I use colored pencils. Working out which colors I'm going to use for it, and ah, I do a large drawing of the piece. My drawings aren't faithful representations of the landscapes to the exact landform. I do some changes because I'm simplifying what's there, and sometimes the actual landscape isn't going to make the best painting. So, I do small modifications, but I keep the spirit though, because I want to keep it about what it's about, which is the water issues. And then I start mixing my dyes. I spend a lot of time mixing my dyes and getting my colors exactly right. I do these little squares of color and I put them next to each other and make sure they go together, and make sure that they are going to work. And I'm mixing them by the drop, so you know it's like one drop difference there might be between the color I accept and the one I reject, so we are talking pretty fine tuning and then I start doing my painting, and as I'm doing my painting things change, it's not maybe as I thought it might come out and I start making adjustments. And then sometimes I will do a whole painting and I'm unhappy with it and it goes in the trashcan, so I will start over again. And then I'll do the quilting. Usually with the quilting I don't have a plan of what I'm going to do. I start by anchoring the design, because I have to, so I follow my large sweeping lines to do that. But then when it comes to filling the spaces, I just do it very spontaneously. With quilting on silk, you only have one chance to do it right. Once that needle goes through the silk, it's over. I can't rip out my stitches, so it's a real leap of faith and a mediation when I'm doing my quilting. [laughs.] But I have a hard time keeping myself at the sewing machine, my mind is thinking about so many things, so I often have to listen to books on CD [laughs.] to keep myself there, because otherwise I'm jumping up to do something else. Some idea enters my mind, and I so I want to research this thing on the Internet, let me Google this. It's really a bad thing that I have my computer in the same room with my sewing machine.

KM: How funny. So actual quilting process, is that the most difficult part?

LG: Yeah, I think it's the part that is most mind numbing for me. Because you know there is like moments of creativity deciding what I'm going to do, but after that.

KM: Its work.

LG: It's like, you know, yeah. [laughs.]

KM: What about the binding?

LG: I often bind my quilts in Indian dupioni, again one hundred percent silk. But it is woven with two different color threads, so it is a bit iridescent. The binding on this one is black and royal blue threads woven together, so it's like, it looks like navy, but sometimes it looks royal blue, sometimes it looks black, and I tend not to put on a very thick binding. Although this one is thicker than most, it is probably about three quarters of an inch. Now I'm doing much narrower ones, quarter inch.

KM: Little tiny.

LG: Sometimes I will put borders on my pieces, although I tend not to do that anymore.

KM: Just the aerial?

LG: Yes, I just like having the piece.

KM: It is really hard to believe that we have about three minutes.

LG: Okay.

KM: Is there anything else that you would, I mean, I want to give you an opportunity to add anything before we end.

LG: Yeah, I think I talked about the inspiration for my work. There is another thing I will add is that I really do spend a lot of time in the wilderness, and I think that is where I developed this real spiritual connection with the landscape, and just looking at what we as humans have done to the land. And I really get out there. I backpack and will go off for six day trips where I really try to get deep into the wilderness. It's not like just driving the car to the National Park and walking off of the road. I really try to get remote, and so that is a very important part of my art making actually.

KM: I would like to thank you, and of course I would love for this to go on, but I want to thank you for taking the time for the interview.

LG: Thank you.

KM: It is now 11:15 and we are going to end our interview.

LG: Thanks.

KM: Oh, you're welcome.